Breaking the Cycle
by Kimtastic
Summary: A look at Ross and Rachel's relationship after the series.  All canon pairings are included, but this is not for R/R fans.  I'd call this more of a character study of Rachel.


**Characters/Pairings**: Ross/Rachel, Chandler/Monica, Phoebe/Mike, Joey/Alex, one-sided Rachel/Joey, Gunther, and the kids.

**Summary**: Post-series look at what happens to the characters – main focus is on Rachel.

**Warning**: **This one is not for R/R fans**. Also, discretion is advised for abuse, violence, and swearing.

**Genre**: character study and angst

* * *

"She'd had this before, but never so _continuously_. It came up and went down, but it didn't go away."

- "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What it is in French," Stephen King

* * *

As the gang all sat in Central Perk for the last time in what would probably be a long time, Rachel couldn't stop smiling and tearing up. She held onto Ross and he held onto her, and she was so happy that she felt like she could burst, just like the fireworks she would look up at in awe as she huddled closer to her sisters on the fourth of July.

A couple days after Ross and Rachel were reunited with their daughter, Ross pulled some more strings for Rachel to get her old job back at Ralph Lauren. She didn't know how he did it, but then, she didn't really care. All that mattered to her was Ross at the time. When he told her the good news after she dropped Emma off at her mother's, Rachel spent the night afterward thanking Ross for all the good he'd done, for being so accommodating, understanding, and sweet.

She was still so happy, and pleased with her decision.

* * *

Three months later, Rachel realized that she wasn't happy anymore.

Actually, she was far from happy. Joey was going to move across the country, to L.A. where he'd get a much better shot at furthering his career. Phoebe was pregnant and she and Mike were planning on joining Monica and Chandler out in the suburbs. Not that those changes upset Rachel; no, she was thrilled for her friends. She was just sad that they had to move away, that she wouldn't get to see them every day. It didn't help at all that Ross was snapping at Rachel again, causing her to snap right back at him before she could stop herself.

But they said they were going to work things out this time. Ross had said they were done being stupid. And Rachel knew that this wasn't a game anymore, that they had already crossed the point of no return and they didn't have the liberty to go back over it like they did so many times in the past.

And, as she said herself, this is where she belonged. With Ross. With her family.

* * *

Rachel never admitted it to anyone, but Ross scared her sometimes.

Not that she was worried that he would ever hit her, or their daughter. Ross could let his temper get the better of him, but he never completely followed through with physical violence. And sure, he yelled whenever he got angry, but lots of people did that. Rachel did that, too. It wasn't like she couldn't handle herself around him. Sometimes she ended up yelling at him way more than he did at her.

Once in a while, though, the look in his eyes – the way he talked down to her – made her want to take a couple steps back when they got into their usual arguments. It made her want to look down at the carpet, the way she did when her father would yell at her when she did something bad.

* * *

Then Ross proposed to her – not like how he'd said he wanted to do it, in the planetarium; he ended up getting down on one knee during dinner at a fancy restaurant – and she was suddenly so happy again.

In the end, it didn't matter _how_ he proposed, because as long as he did, that's what really counted.

* * *

Ross and Rachel were married again in February, nine months after Rachel got off the plane. They had some rocky moments up until then, but they knew that this was what they wanted to do. It's what they had _planned_ to do. And if you had a plan, you should stick to it. That's why they were called plans.

"We're not playing around anymore, right?" Ross said to her the day before the ceremony, and Rachel agreed wholeheartedly.

The wedding wasn't lavish and didn't cost as much as Monica and Chandler's. It was nothing like the story Rachel had told at the Gellers' anniversary party, but she was actually okay with that.

It was a tiny, simple gathering: both of their parents came; Monica, Chandler, and their twins came; Phoebe, Mike, and_ their_ twins came; and Joey came all the way from L.A. by himself. He looked overjoyed for the newlyweds, but when he hugged Rachel and congratulated her, she felt all the distance that had grown between them since he'd left, a mile-wide chasm that pained her a little.

However, the moment Ross kissed her after they said their vows in front of Joey, she completely forgot all about that distance.

* * *

After Ross bought a new car, Rachel used it to bring Emma over to Monica and Chandler's house to hang out – after getting her license renewed, of course, and taking several test drives around the city to prove to Ross that she wouldn't destroy his beloved, shiny red Volvo. When she drove herself and Emma, though, she did go a lot slower than she used to, a lot less recklessly, but once in a while she found herself going at least five miles over the speed limit, out of pure habit.

The funny thing was, Rachel had always felt like her friendship with Chandler was the weakest in the group because he was always throwing her off with his odd, stupid jokes and awkward mannerisms, but in her time away from Ross and Joey, she saw more and more of herself in Chandler. She also started to notice how he'd try to speak up whenever Monica wanted to do something or go somewhere, and then she saw the way he'd cave in after putting up a half-hearted argument here and there.

It was odd that she hadn't really picked up on little patterns like that, but when she mentioned something about it to Phoebe at lunch one weekend, Pheebs rolled her eyes and said, "Well, _duh_. They're always like that – where the hell have you been for the last six years?"

Rachel saw more and more of Ross in Monica as well: how things almost always had to be their way, or the highway. Not that that was a bad thing. It was good for people to have strong wills, to know what they wanted and to go after it. That's what got Rachel to stay with Ross instead of going to Paris, after all. If he hadn't asked her to stay, she would have left. She probably would have ended up crying her way back to him after a month or two on her own, she told herself. She couldn't even imagine what it would've been like to raise Emma in a foreign country these days.

Maybe, Rachel realized, the big difference between her and Chandler was that he liked constant guidance – liked having someone else telling him what to do most of the time – which was why he stayed with Monica for so long, and was still happily married to her. Yet Rachel knew that, hidden just beneath the surface of her devotion for Ross, she would always be the kind of person who wanted to break away from pressure and force, from someone else telling her how to live her life.

She just didn't know how to break away from the pressure anymore.

* * *

Rachel chewed on her lower lip.

She stared at the pregnancy test in her hand.

She knew she should have felt like she was on top of the world. Bursting with pride and joy at the prospect of getting to bear another child and raise him or her with Ross.

Instead, all Rachel felt like doing was sighing as she opened the bathroom door and went to tell her husband the big news.

* * *

Three months later, they found out that Rachel was having another girl.

She already had Emma. No, Rachel Geller couldn't tear apart her family, not now. She would just have to work a little harder on her issues with Ross.

Plus, there was the simple truth that she didn't know where else she could go. She couldn't raise two kids by herself, even though she was sure Ross would still help her out. That is, if he would be on board with her leaving in the first place, which she highly doubted. Despite his occasional outbursts and bristly demeanor with her, she knew Ross still loved her, and wouldn't give her up without a fight.

In the end, Rachel knew that her children needed their daddy. They needed to _live_ with their daddy.

She didn't want to talk to her mother about what was going on, or be the cause of her father's second heart-attack. She couldn't bring herself to pack her bags and barge in on the Bing-Gellers, or the Hannigan-Buffays with Emma and her unborn child in tow. And Joey was so, so far away, finally working his way up in showbiz and therefore probably too wrapped up with his own stuff to deal with Rachel's usual drama, her usual bullshit with Ross.

So, no, she couldn't give up on him. Not now, not just because she felt like she was in a tight spot.

* * *

There was a sort of totem pole to their conflicts. Rachel didn't see it before, but she was starting to categorize them and sort them into their respective slots every day.

At the bottom were what she called 'tiffs'. Little moments of them snapping at each other and trading insults, like when Ross practically bawled after discovering that Emma had somehow gotten a hold of his favorite fossil and then flushed it down the toilet. Or when Ross got fed up with Rachel constantly leaving food lying around and pretended that there were rats in the apartment to scare the living daylights out of her, and a newfound appreciation for cleanliness into her. These were amusing enough, but Rachel realized that they weren't _as_ amusing without the rest of the gang hanging out with them in Central Perk and listening to them snipe.

Above the tiffs were the arguments. Debates about whether Emma's first word was "Mommy," or "mammal". Arguments about whether or not Emma would grow up to be a zoologist or an Olympic figure skater. Back-and-forths about whether the Discovery Channel was subconsciously teaching Emma, or if it was just boring her to sleep. Rachel's constant flare-ups when Ross kept trying to force stuffed dinosaurs on his daughter, and he retaliated by telling his unborn second daughter that she _would_ like dinosaurs when she grew up, oh, yes, she would.

Above _that_ were the actual fights. Fights about whether Rachel should be taking Emma out on a play date with some random guy and his cute two-year-old son she'd met at the park one day. Fights about how late Rachel was working, fights about how Ross sometimes felt like Rachel didn't even want to be his wife anymore, and fights about Ross's inability to grasp the fact that Rachel was her own person and sometimes needed space from Ross.

The worst fights between them were always about Paris.

At the top of the pole were the really serious wars between them. Battles raged in which they dragged out each other's sordid dating histories to use them against each other, battles in which Rachel insulted Emily and Bonnie, and Ross threw his hands up in the air and asked if Rachel secretly still wanted to try having another go with Joey or Gavin, or if she'd want to call up Paolo and see if he had completed his apparent life goal of successfully contracting AIDs. Toward the end, they started to get into the whole 'break' issue between them, and while Ross was flippant about it and kept asking why Rachel could never get over it and forgive him for sleeping with Chloe, Rachel screamed at Ross that he couldn't get it through his head that what he did was wrong, that he never accepted responsibility for what he'd done, and that he still treated the whole matter as if it were a joke.

It was only when Rachel would start wheezing, her face beet red, and when she'd throw out an arm to steady herself, when a look of alarm would cross over Ross's face and he'd rush her to the hospital, which brought their blow-ups to a standstill.

They'd only had about two or three of these since the day Rachel found out she was pregnant again, but at the back of her mind, she wondered why they still couldn't get past all of that stuff. Why they had to resort to such vicious tactics when Monica and Chandler's tiffs were mostly only tiffs, and when Phoebe just complained about Mike's refusal to try out certain kinky things with her.

* * *

Rachel was having one of those increasing number of moments of wanting to leave Ross.

She knew she should. Knew it had been a mistake to stay with him instead of taking a risk and going to Paris. Taking the plunge that probably would've shown her just how satisfied she could have been without him in the long run, like how satisfied, independent, and well-adjusted she'd become after leaving Barry.

But it was too late for her; that ship had already sailed.

Or, to be more technical about it, that plane had already flown.

* * *

One day, Ross asked Rachel if they could move to the suburbs.

Well, it was more like he told her he'd been thinking about it, and the way he spoke, it seemed like it was going to be an inevitable thing.

Rachel's throat constricted, and she reminded him how secure their jobs were; how much he loved his classes at NYU.

"Yeah, that's a good point, but I was thinking, you know, we're gonna need some more space, now that we have another baby on the way," he said, putting his hand on Rachel's enormous belly and smiling a little at her. "We'll figure it all out as we go."

Almost randomly, she thought back to the time Joey had first felt her bump when Emma was growing inside her, how excited she had been and how happy Joey had seemed for her.

She wished she could feel as excited as she did back then.

* * *

Ross and Rachel named their second daughter Rebecca Marie Geller.

When they brought her back from the hospital, Emma was noticeably jealous of all the attention her sister was getting, but she got over it after several weeks and fawned over Rebecca, like Rachel had fawned over Jill when she finally came to terms with the fact that she wasn't the baby in the family anymore.

Rebecca turned out to be a godsend for her parents. They were too busy cooing over their new daughter – and basking in their friends' and families' congratulations – to fight, so for a few months, they didn't.

Much.

Becca seemed just as perfect and Rachel-like as Emma was when she'd been a newborn. Emma began smiling and laughing a lot more, and things seemed to take another beautiful upward swing for all the Gellers.

Ross and Rachel moved out of the Village six months after Rebecca's birth. They lived half an hour away from Monica and Chandler, and forty-five minutes away from Phoebe and Mike. Things had taken another turn for the better after a brief downward spiral.

Then they plummeted right back down.

* * *

Monica kept casting Rachel fleeting, worried looks whenever she came over with Jack and Erica, and Phoebe visited sometimes to cheer Rachel up with her guitar or an amusing story about Sophie and Mike Jr., but at the back of Rachel's mind, she knew that she was living her life vicariously through her friends, rather than through her own family. Through the time she spent with Ross.

Rachel managed to snag a decent job at a tiny, cramped Lacoste office in an outlet mall that only took a twenty-minute drive from the house, and Ross still taught at NYU. He wasn't around as much as he used to be, due to the commute, but his increased absence didn't really bother Rachel. She felt a lot more laid back, more calm and quiet, when it was just her and the girls hanging out at home.

It reminded her of how things had always been in apartment #19.

* * *

By the time Rebecca's first birthday rolled around, Rachel's drinking had become a regular habit.

Not that she did it a _lot_, not enough for Ross to notice and tell her she needed to cut back. It was kinda like how she vaguely remembered Sandra used to drink, except Rachel did a little more of it. Wine, and spritzers, and midori, and more wine. They said that drinking wine was good for your heart, so it couldn't hurt her too much. Forget the fact that Rachel didn't know who the 'they' in question was that said that, and didn't really give a shit anyway.

The Gellers hired a new nanny, a young woman who was as sweet and caring – and supposedly just as hot, according to Chandler while Mon was out of earshot – as Molly had been. Sometimes it seemed like _she_ was Rebecca's mom instead of Rachel.

Rachel dropped Emma off at the best pre-school in the county every morning, and then went to work and lost herself for hours in faxes, orders, and conference calls, de-stressing as she'd peruse catalogues and magazines, surreptitiously playing Solitaire and Tetris on her computer when her workload wasn't too heavy.

* * *

Joey finally came back to New York while he was taking time out from starring in a successful drama series. It had been three and a half years since he'd moved away. He brought his beautiful, vivacious wife and a darling little baby girl with him, and the gang all hung out at Monica and Chandler's place, eating finger food and catching up on one another's lives.

"It took us about two seconds to name her - Josephine just felt _right_," Alex explained as she cradled her daughter, and Joey kissed her cheek, lovingly putting his arm around her. "Y'know, so we can call her Jo, or Joey. We get confused over who I'm talking to _all_ the time, but, eh, what can you do," she added with a laugh and a carefree shrug.

Rachel smiled politely, then excused herself to go to the bathroom. As she made her way over there, she passed by Mike, Phoebe, and their twins. She passed by Monica, Chandler, and _their_ twins.

Everyone else looked so happy. Even Ross, who had promised not to get into anything with Rachel while they were with all their friends again.

Everyone else looked so goddamn _happy_.

When Rachel closed the door behind herself, she burst into tears as she turned the sink on all the way to drown out her stifled sobs.

It was one of the only times she thought it was okay to feel sorry for herself.

* * *

Ross and Rachel talked about having another kid. Well, _argued_ was more like it, because Ross said he still wanted to have a son with Rachel, but two girls were already more than enough for her to handle – "Yes, Ross, even with Michelle helping out," she said – and that was one of the few issues on which she wouldn't budge. So, she and Ross ended up using protection every time they had sex, and Rachel found herself praying that the condoms wouldn't break each time, even though she was practically religious in using her contraception.

Eventually, Rachel got her tubes tied, and after she hesitatingly told Ross about getting the procedure done, he exploded – no, not just exploded, he pretty much went _nuclear_ – and wouldn't speak to her for several days.

The silence between them turned out to be a welcome break from their tiresome, cyclical fights.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Emma turned out to be an incredibly gorgeous child – God, she looked _so_ much like Rachel when she was a little girl, except Emma's hair was naturally lighter, matching Ben and Carol's shades – even though she was much, much quieter than Rachel had been.

Despite that, Emma was popular, she was the best dressed in her class, and she was very bright. She had an aptitude for art instead of science, though, which Ross was less than enthused about. He didn't show his disappointment, but Rachel could still sense it from time to time. He tried getting Emma to doodle some dinosaurs for him, but she was more interested in drawing people and still lifes. When she'd show him her incredible drawings of bowls of fruit or her family, he would give her too-wide smiles and say, "That's great, sweetie. That's really great," every single time.

Rachel, on the other hand, genuinely loved Emma's drawings, and she nearly covered the entire refrigerator with her firstborn's artwork, taking a step back and marveling over just how talented her eight-year-old daughter was.

* * *

Ross pretty much gave up on getting Emma interested in science stuff and turned his focus upon Becca. He gave her dinosaur coloring books, Emma's old stuffed dinosaurs – which Emma never liked in the first place; her favorite toy was what Joey used to call "Crappy Hugsy" – and dinosaur flashcards, all of which Becca seemed to be mildly interested in. The two of them watched _The Land Before Time_, along with a couple of its sequels, over and over again together on the weekends while Emma would be busy drawing in her room, and Rachel would join Becca and Ross sometimes, feeling a sudden, fleeting surge of contentment rush right through her.

When Emma came home from school, she kept to herself a lot, even though Rachel constantly wanted to hang out with her. Apprehension flitted across Emma's face whenever her parents started bickering at dinner. Rachel would clam up when she'd notice that _look_ crossing her daughter's face, and she'd shake her head pointedly at Ross as she speared her food with exhausted frustration.

Becca, on the other hand, was, in all honesty, turning out to be a combination of Amy and Jill. She was just as beautiful as they, but whereas Emma was soft-spoken and had a sweet, gentle disposition, Becca was almost always rude and impatient, and she expected a lot more from other people without any regard for their feelings. It was like she had no filter for what and what not to say, and in the worst way possible. Rachel had a few long talks with Rebecca about selfishness and her caustic, blunt nature, but every single time, Becca waved Rachel off dismissively and turned her nose up to the ceiling.

"Mommy, stop whining. It hurts my ears," she said during their latest talk.

Before Rachel could hold herself back, she slapped her own daughter across the face.

She wanted to curl up into a ball and die right afterward, and apologized profusely to a sobbing Rebecca as she cradled her against her chest. She rarely reprimanded Rebecca after that, due to her fear of going too far again. Rachel just let Ross handle their second-born whenever she got too out of hand because he seemed to be the only person Becca ever listened to. He seemed to be the only one she ever respected – maybe even feared.

* * *

Rachel knew, she _knew_ that she should leave, but she'd fallen into a pattern. Or a bear trap. Either way, it made no difference.

She'd fallen down, and she couldn't get up.

* * *

One night, Ross and Rachel had a shouting match that lasted for twelve minutes. Rachel knew exactly how long it was because, for some reason, her eyes kept flitting over to the clock from the moment they both blew up at each other, screaming and yelling and crying and trembling and raging at each other, not even bothering to care if the neighbors got pissed and called the police. It was as though she were checking to see if they'd go longer than their last fight, which had lasted at least twenty minutes.

At the back of her mind, Rachel was thankful, once again, that her girls had so many friends who had the biggest houses, the biggest bedrooms, for mass slumber parties.

So there Ross and Rachel were, shouting and bitching and tearing each other to shreds, and Rachel left Ross that time after another minute passed. Her hands shook as she snatched up her purse and stormed out the front door with Ross calling after her with a sudden, worried catch in his voice, and she burst into the fresh night air, welcoming it as she stalked over to their second car parked out on the street, yanked the door open, got in, and slammed the door shut about five seconds before Ross would have been in danger of having to get his fingers sewn back on his hand.

She drove away and drove away, listening to her Barry Manilow CD and then nothing and then the radio and then nothing again, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel and turning her phone off when she checked it and saw that she missed about seven calls from Ross.

Instead of calling him back later, she called her daughters on their tiny emergency cell phones and reassured them that she was okay; she was just taking a little vacation, that was all. "Tell Daddy that I'm taking a little... _break_," she said, feeling a tiny bit of vicious triumph in getting to use that word against Ross.

But the truth was, she didn't know _what_ she was doing. She didn't know whether to go to Monica and Chandler's or to Phoebe and Mike's, or if she should go all the way to L.A. and show up on Joey's doorstep, letting him bring her inside, then probably start heating up some leftover pizza as he'd ask her what was wrong, despite her not having called him in years because she didn't want to start sobbing uncontrollably like a little baby about how much her life sucked.

In the end, Rachel ended up staying in a hotel suite the whole weekend and called in sick on Monday, flipping through channels on the television, drinking and eating her way through everything in the mini-bar except for the macadamia nuts, ordering room service because she couldn't bring herself to go downstairs for the buffets, and sleeping more peacefully than she had in... God, how long had it been again? Four years? Five?

She went back home late on Monday night, after she knew the girls would be fast asleep. In the end, she couldn't bring herself to leave her family, or whisk her daughters away from their father. Or kill herself with her secret stash of anti-depressants.,

She went back to Ross again, just like she always did, and this time, he didn't reprimand her or yell at her at all. He just looked so happy and relieved to have her back.

Things were on a definite uphill swing again for two months, but then they went right back down into the shitter.

They always went right back down into the shitter.

* * *

Rachel considered bringing up the 'D' word to Ross again.

It would've been the right, sensible thing for them to discuss. They barely spoke to each other anymore, and when they did, they almost always ended up trading snide, cutting remarks. The only time they ever seemed to get along was when they were having sex, and even during those rare occasions, it just didn't feel like it used to. Rachel didn't feel any more heat with Ross, only safety and dissatisfaction, along with a burning sense of resentment. It vaguely reminded her of what things had been like with Barry.

Once she actually did broach the ugly subject with Ross. Casually, over dinner, when the girls were sleeping over at their friends' houses. Rachel was careful not to say 'divorce'; she used the words 'separation' and 'temporary basis' to make things easier on him, but he tensed up immediately and blustered about not feeling like they needed it, and he reassured Rachel that they would work things out, that they shouldn't give up on each other.

After that night, he started being really nice to her again. He made her breakfast in bed, he joked around with her, he bought her expensive things that he knew she wouldn't return, he constantly asked her how she was doing, he called her "sweetie" again, and he made her feel like he still loved her. He reminded her why she was still married to him.

Not long after he kissed her and left for work one morning, Amy – _no, Becca, her name is __**Becca**_, Rachel had to remind herself – rolled her eyes and muttered, "Yeah, bet this'll last three weeks, tops," before she got up from the breakfast table, but Rachel didn't go after her.

Instead, she just stared down at her plate.

* * *

Ross's sweet, romantic period lasted a little longer than three weeks that time, but only just. By the following month, he started getting more and more on Rachel's case about constantly having lunch with one of her handsome, young co-workers. Ross wasn't visibly angry about it, but he was being his usual passive-aggressive self about the guy.

"Ross, come on. He's _gay_," Rachel pointed out to him. He shook his head and said, "Yeah, that's what he wants you to believe."

Rachel broke it off gently to Stephen, saying that she could get more work done if she ate at her desk – which she actually hated doing; she never wanted to be one of those sad, pathetic losers who did that sort of thing – and he smiled, saying that he understood, but the look in his eyes told her that he understood all too well what was really going on.

* * *

Ross and Rachel finally saw someone at Monica's insistence.

They wouldn't talk much during the first session. They wouldn't even look at each other. They kept their eyes averted from Dr. Vaughn's.

Toward the end, they were told that just showing up was a good thing. That it meant they were admitting they needed help, and that they were willing to work things out instead of giving up on each other.

Rachel didn't say that she felt like they had given up on each other a long, long time ago.

* * *

After their third session, Ross angrily slammed the car door shut as he fumbled with his seatbelt. He muttered something that Rachel couldn't quite make out.

"What is it?" she asked, dabbing the corners of her eyes with the tissue that Dr. Vaughn had given her.

"We are not going back there ever again," Ross told her, in a tone that left little room for discussion.

"Why," she said anyway.

"Because he's got us all wrong!" Ross yelled, sounding more exasperated than angry. "Be – because he doesn't have a clue what the hell he's talking about and is just making stuff up to make it look like he's helping us! Come on, you don't honestly believe all that stuff he said about our childhoods, right? Our _parents_. And that… that thing he said about our problems going all the way back to high school? None of that's true, right?"

"No. It's not," Rachel lied.

"I can't believe people actually get paid to do this," Ross grumbled as he turned the key in the ignition. "I just hope Mon hasn't already gone and told Mom and Dad about us having to go see someone."

_You know what?_ Rachel wanted to snap at him, _I hope she did. And I hope they end up putting it in the damn __Geller Yeller__._

She bit the inside of her cheek instead, and shifted so she could reach for her seatbelt and pull it around herself.

"We'll work things out on our own," Ross said as he turned the car out onto the main road. "We never needed _couples' counseling_ in the first place." He spat out the phrase like it was a swear word. "We just... We just need to talk to each other more. Y'know, open up a little, tell each other what we're thinking, what's on our minds. We can do that, right?"

He cast her an expectant sidelong glance.

Rachel nodded absently, turning her head to look out the window, at the storm clouds gathering overhead.

"Yeah. We can do that," she said.

But they didn't.

* * *

Joey and his family came back for another reunion at Monica and Chandler's house. The Tribbianis' daughter looked so much older than she had the last time Rachel had seen her, so much taller. They all still looked so _happy_, and Joey wouldn't stop kissing Alex, and Alex wouldn't stop kissing him back, and giggling, and telling the others funny stories about Joey's usual antics with Jo, and Rachel pretty much wanted to puke every time she set eyes on the two of them. She wanted to puke every single time she overheard Phoebe and Mike joking around with each other about some music-related thing, or whenever Chandler and Monica exchanged a quick high-five. Rachel wanted to scream; she wanted to shake all of the other married couples out of their joyful bubbles, as selfish and horrible as that thought was. She wanted to take Alex aside and beg her to switch places, or to trade husbands with the living doll that once was Rachel Green.

Instead, she laughed when everyone else did. She drank some wine, she hovered around Emma, she didn't speak much, and she kept as much distance as she could between her and Ross because she didn't want them to start sniping at each other and ruin the mood for the others.

Joey went up to her while she was puttering around in the spare room that Monica and Chandler had set aside for Joey when they first bought the house. Other than a small bed and a desk, it was completely empty, but it wasn't like Rachel was there to admire the décor. She just felt like getting away from all the Happy Happersons and being alone for a while, in a place where she didn't have to pretend to laugh or grin.

"Hey, Rach," Joey said as he joined her at the window. "You, uh... You doin' okay?"

"Oh, yeah," she replied wearily, her voice cracking. "Never been better."

She wouldn't look at him, so he reached out and gently put his hand on her shoulder, pulling her toward him.

She let him wrap his arms around her as she sank into his embrace, and it felt so _natural_, so familiar and warm and good, so much like it had all the other times he'd tried to make her feel better.

"Can we go back in time, Joey?" she murmured against his shoulder. She felt like she was dreaming. "Can we go back to Barbados and stay there forever – just you, me, and Emma?"

"Shh, come on, don't say stuff like that," he said, smoothing down her hair with one hand. "Whatever's going on with you and Ross, you two are gonna work it out. You always do."

"No," she whimpered. "No, that's the problem with us. We never, ever do."

She lifted her head and looked up at Joey. She couldn't fully make out his expression because it was blurred by her tears.

Before Rachel could stop herself, she shifted her weight more and more onto her toes as she slid her hands up Joey's back. His soft lips, his love, his never-ending happiness, all looked _so_ familiar, so tantalizingly close...

He tightened his grip on her, clutching her by the arms and firmly lowering her back down, putting space between them as he broke away from her.

"Rach," he said softly. It had been so long since she'd seen him look that shocked. "What're you –"

"– I'm sorry," she cried out. "I just... wanted to..."

"I, uh, need to go back downstairs. My wife, she..." Joey stammered, then turned and bolted out of the room.

Rachel buried her face in her hands.

_I just wanted to feel alive again,_ was what she'd been trying to say.

* * *

Joey never came back to New York, aside from seeing his parents and sisters in Queens a couple times.

Rachel knew about that only because Chandler knew about that. He let the information slip once when she and Ross were over for dinner. Instead of feeling betrayed or angry at Joey, though, Rachel just felt a lump clogging up her throat, and she waited a few minutes before excusing herself so she could cry quietly in the bathroom.

The others visited Joey and his family in L.A. several times, but the Gellers didn't. Well, Ross went there for some dino conference and came back from it looking the most excited he'd been in years. He asked Rachel if she wanted to take the kids with them to California during the upcoming Spring Break, Woo Hoo, but Rachel made some weak excuse about work, and Ross looked dejected at first, but ironically enough, he let the whole thing go fairly quickly.

Rachel wondered, fleetingly, if Ross had had sex in L.A., and if that were why he was in such a bright, chipper mood for three straight weeks. There might've been only one or two hot female paleontologists in New York, but maybe there were a whole bunch of them in California, at the conference. Maybe the farmers grew hot supermodel paleontologists on trees or something, and Ross had picked one off for himself during his trip.

Then, Rachel realized that, even if he _did_ cheat, even if he ended up breaking down and confessing it to her one night, she knew – she _knew_ – that she wouldn't care about it at all. In fact, she wanted him to tell her; she practically burned for him to tell her just so she could use his infidelity to make a case for their divorce.

He never broke down and made any confessions to her, though, even when she tried pressing him about it in roundabout ways. Never ever.

* * *

"Ross," Rachel said one night as she raked her fingers through her hair, "I really think it would be for the best if we –"

"– Oh, no," he said immediately, but with matching exhaustion in his own voice, as if he were playing a very old game that wasn't fun anymore. "No, Rach, I _told_ you that I don't wanna be that guy. I can't be Four Divorce Guy. I can't..." He sighed, then slowly took her hands in his, but she wouldn't look at him when he said, "Look, we'll work on this, okay? Just... Please don't make me be that guy. _Please_."

"All right," she said, dropping her hands as she headed toward their bed. "All right."

Ross's sweet period only lasted about a week that time.

* * *

The following five years passed by in a blur.

A blur of wine, awkward Thanksgiving dinners over at Monica and Chandler's, countless games of Solitaire and evenings of Rachel holing herself up in her office so she wouldn't have to eat dinner with Ross, Monica's sympathetic looks and attempts to advise Rachel on what to do, Chandler's constant quips, Emma's art exhibits and glorious hugs that were the few bright spots in Rachel's pathetic not-life, Becca's soccer games and science fairs and detentions and attitude problems that seemed virtually unsolvable, Ross's weary pleading for Rachel to cut down on her drinking, conversations with Phoebe about Ross and Becca that never seemed to go anywhere, extremely brief phone calls to Joey whenever Ross thought they should be polite and catch up with him, and still more wine.

It wasn't like Rachel was an alcoholic, but she knew she was getting there. She went to a couple AA meetings and kept herself from going over the edge for her daughters' sakes, and she got to the point at which she only argued with Ross once every couple of weeks before reaching a silent, tired truce with him… until they'd start bitching at one another all over again.

They didn't touch each other in the last four years – not since Dr. Green died and Rachel sought comfort in Ross's soothing embrace when the got back home after the funeral, and that time she knew he couldn't bring himself to reject her – and Rachel was pretty sure they wouldn't touch each other ever again. Not the way they used to. They kept as much space as they could between them in bed, and they stopped pretending that they loved each other, that they had really stopped being in love about a decade ago.

Maybe even long before that.

* * *

Rachel tried not to argue with Ross at Emma's high school graduation ceremony. She really did. But she couldn't help herself.

With Ross, she could never help herself.

The keynote speaker – Rachel had no clue who he was, and didn't really care anyway – actually had to turn his head and shush them during his speech.

* * *

Rachel broke down into tears the day Emma had to leave for college. She slept in Emma's bed that night, then back in her own bed with Ross, and then she spent several nights out in the living room, sitting on the couch and staring out the window as if she were waiting for her first-born to come back home any minute.

Monica tried reassuring Rachel about the whole thing, saying that she'd get over it. Rachel didn't tell her that, even though Rachel knew she still felt some semblance of love for the rest of her family, loved both Ross and Becca, deep down, Rachel didn't love them as much as she loved Emma. And now the one tiny ray of hope in Rachel's life was gone.

She was gone.

* * *

Rachel blinked, and she suddenly felt like she was snapping awake again when she was positive she'd been conscious for the last ten minutes. Which, she reflected uneasily, wasn't new for her.

She turned her face toward Ross, studying his profile as Becca's principal delivered the surprising news that yes, she _would _be able to graduate, but only if her grades picked up several notches in her last two years of high school. Ross opened his mouth and started discussing college opportunities for Becca with a polite smile on his face and a rare twinge of optimism in his tone.

Rachel hoped Dr. Geller was happy. He certainly _looked_ happy.

And why wouldn't he? He'd gotten everything he wanted since their days at Lincoln High: beautiful kids, a house in the suburbs, a great job teaching a subject he was passionate about, and most importantly, Rachel the Robot as his wife.

She suddenly found herself wishing that, one day, he'd choke and die on all his happiness.

* * *

Emma brought a new boyfriend home after her first year in college. They'd met in the freshman dorm, and they looked like they were already in love.

He seemed like a nice boy; he was tall, dark-haired, and he came from a good family. A nice, normal family.

"What's your major?" Ross asked him during dinner. Meanwhile, Rachel kept staring down at the tablecloth, toying with her salmon instead of eating it, not even caring how apathetic she knew she appeared.

"Well, it used to be pre-med, but I'm thinking about going for something a little less intense," the kid said. He had a nice, eager-looking face. "I've always been interested in archaeology, so –"

The sound of Rachel's fork clattering onto the plate interrupted him, startling everyone and making them look up at her.

"Oh, for God's sake, Mom; are you drunk again?" Becca asked with a groan, and Rachel quietly excused herself as Ross told Becca to go to her room.

* * *

"How are things with... with... um," Rachel asked, searching for the future archaeologist's name as she readjusted her grip on the phone with an unsteady hand.

"Oh, Jordan?" Emma said with a small laugh. "Great! Really good. I mean, he's a little, you know, clingy. And kinda jealous. But what boyfriend isn't, right? He's just worried about me, is all. Thinks I'm gonna dump him for one of the sexy, brooding hipsters in my art class. Yeah, like I'd wanna blather on and on about Camus and Van Gogh's tragic love life, smoke pot, and eat ramen noodles every night. No, thanks!"

"Uh huh," Rachel said as she bit the nail of her thumb. "So when are you two coming over again, sweetie?"

* * *

Before Jordan had to leave and start the long drive back home, Rachel asked to speak to him privately in the kitchen.

When he joined her there, he was all smiles, but after seeing her stony expression, his grin faltered a little.

"Look, I'm only gonna say this once to you, kid," Rachel said in a low, dangerous voice that she barely recognized. That she hadn't used in years. "Stay the hell away from my daughter."

A few seconds on the wall clock ticked by.

Jordan let out a nervous chuckle, then said, "Um, I'm sorry, Mrs. Geller. What was that, again?"

"I _said_," Rachel ground out, "I was only gonna tell you once. If I ever find out that you're hanging around Emma again after tonight, I will –"

"– Are you… Are you _threatening_ me?" he sputtered.

"Yes. Yes, I am," she said calmly before walking past him out of the kitchen.

He broke up with Emma five minutes later, and as he practically fled out of the house, he didn't say a word to Rachel. He didn't even look at her.

Emma immediately rushed to her mother, sobbing her poor little eyes out, and Rachel wrapped her up in a hug as she whispered reassurances into Emma's hair, a grim sort of satisfaction tugging at the corner of her mouth, at what was left of her soul.

In all likelihood, Jordan probably wouldn't have turned out to be anything like Ross. And Rachel knew she couldn't scare away all of Emma's potential Rosses.

But Rachel had to be sure of this case being closed for good.

She had to be damn sure that Jordan, at the very least, wouldn't turn out to be like Leonard _or_ Ross, for her firstborn child's sake.

* * *

Ross and Rachel filed for divorce shortly after Rebecca graduated and drove off to a small school about an hour away. He didn't seem upset about the divorce – more like relieved than anything else, actually. It was, Rachel noted bitterly, one of the only times he'd been willing to let go of her.

Rachel stayed in what originally was supposed to be Joey's room in Monica and Chandler's house. Monica held her as they sat on the living room couch and cried, and Chandler, for once, didn't make any sarcastic comments. He just put a comforting hand on Rachel's shoulder and squeezed it.

Monica stroked her hair and told her that none of them saw this coming, but really, Rachel thought to herself, they must have known on some level. As much as they'd been rooting for Ross and Rachel to find some common ground and be happy together forever and always, even Joey and Phoebe also probably knew for some time, deep down, that this final break-up had been long overdue.

* * *

Rachel moved out after staying in the spare room for a few months and went back to Manhattan. She got a great position at Banana Republic and set up her own place in the Village, with help from Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, and Mike. Not in any of the gang's old buildings – it would've seemed wrong, somehow, to do so – but Rachel was close enough to Central Perk to stop by there and get her morning coffee from Gunther, or his adorable teenage son.

On Rachel's first night in her new place, she uncorked a bottle of wine. Poured herself a glass. Then, after staring down at it for a few seconds, she poured the entire contents down the sink.

She took in her surroundings, and started chewing on her bottom lip.

It was the first time she ever lived alone, she realized. She was fifty-two years old, she was twice divorced, both of her girls had grown up and left home to start their own lives, and Rachel Green was finally, completely, and utterly alone.

After absorbing that thought, she smiled – really _smiled_, not one of those fakey grins she'd slap on for her boss, her family, or her friends – for the first time in years.


End file.
